Salon.com > U.S. Intelligencehttp://www.salon.com
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 20:00:00 +0000enhourly1From James Bond to Edward Snowden: How the dangerous fantasies of spy fiction shaped our “Mission: Impossible” worldhttp://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/from_james_bond_to_edward_snowden_how_the_dangerous_fantasies_of_spy_fiction_shaped_our_mission_impossible_world/
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/from_james_bond_to_edward_snowden_how_the_dangerous_fantasies_of_spy_fiction_shaped_our_mission_impossible_world/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 23:23:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=14030872What do we know about the secret world of espionage and intelligence, and how do we know it? The story that connects James Bond and Edward Snowden, fiction and reality, thrilling romance and profound cynicism or disillusionment, has been told over many years and in many ways. I’ve been thinking about this since seeing the new Tom Cruise movie “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” but this really isn’t a movie review and I wouldn’t argue that this capably crafted thriller from writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (who also directed Cruise in “Jack Reacher”) breaks any new ground or represents the ultimate distillation of anything. It’s a diverting ride, played out against spectacular locations, that repackages a whole bunch of familiar elements and attitudes: A little latter-day Bond, a little Jason Bourne, a little John le Carré, a little 1950s Hitchcock.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/from_james_bond_to_edward_snowden_how_the_dangerous_fantasies_of_spy_fiction_shaped_our_mission_impossible_world/feed/0The Bin Laden outrage nobody is talking about: What the government’s OBL “treasure trove” really revealshttp://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/the_bin_laden_outrage_nobody_is_talking_about_what_the_governments_obl_treasure_trove_really_reveals/
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/the_bin_laden_outrage_nobody_is_talking_about_what_the_governments_obl_treasure_trove_really_reveals/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 16:40:00 +0000Peter Finocchiarohttp://www.salon.com/?p=13971540About 10 days ago, Seymour Hersh wrote a story claiming much of what the government has told us about the Osama bin Laden raid was false. Among other claims, Hersh said the government had exaggerated the "trove" of intelligence seized from bin Laden's compound. "We were told at first," Hersh quoted the primary source for his story, "that the Seals produced garbage bags of stuff and that the community is generating daily intelligence reports out of this stuff....But nothing has come of it."

Wednesday morning, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released what it calls a "sizable tranche" of documents it explains were seized from the compound. That "sizable tranche" consists of just 409 documents, of which only 103 were previously considered classified. (That ODNI calls this to be "sizable" may support Hersh's claim there was less information than claimed.)

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/the_bin_laden_outrage_nobody_is_talking_about_what_the_governments_obl_treasure_trove_really_reveals/feed/45Was Osama bin Laden a 9/11 “Truther”?http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/was_osama_bin_laden_a_911_truther/
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/was_osama_bin_laden_a_911_truther/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 16:10:00 +0000Joanna Rothkopfhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13971548This week, the United States government released the list of English-language books found in Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound after a team of Navy SEALS killed the al-Qaeda leader architect of 9/11 in 2011. It turns out, bin Laden loved conspiracy theories.

"In terms of the materials that are there, some of the things that we've found to be of note were that bin Laden was probably an avid conspiracy theorist. Of the 38 full-length English-language books he had in his possession, about half of them were conspiracy theory books," said Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokesperson Jeffrey Anchukaitis in an interview with BuzzFeed.

Most amusingly, he owned "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11" by conspiracy theorist David Ray Griffin, which makes him something of an ouroboros (the greek symbol of a snake eating its own tail representing that things are cyclical and that even bin Laden couldn't resist reading his own comments).

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/05/21/was_osama_bin_laden_a_911_truther/feed/18“Citizenfour”: Laura Poitras’ secret Snowden documentary is electrichttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/13/citizenfour_laura_poitras_secret_snowden_documentary_is_electric/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/13/citizenfour_laura_poitras_secret_snowden_documentary_is_electric/#commentsMon, 13 Oct 2014 18:05:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13795355As is customary each fall, this year’s New York Film Festival has unveiled any number of buzzed-over new movies, including the world premieres of David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” and the United States premieres of several major Oscar contenders, among them Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Birdman.” But nothing at NYFF felt quite as consequential (to use the vocabulary word of the moment) as “Citizenfour,” the documentary about Edward Snowden that Laura Poitras made over the last two years, essentially in secret and under severe duress.

There were no celebrities at Friday night’s Lincoln Center premiere of “Citizenfour,” unless you count Glenn Greenwald, the muckraking journalist (and former Salon columnist) made famous – or infamous, in some people’s eyes -- by the Snowden NSA leaks. But the event carried a degree of electrical crackle that no amount of Brangelina could ever provide. I’ll have more to say about the movie itself in due course. (It will opens in limited theatrical release beginning Oct. 24.) For now, let’s say that “Citizenfour” is an urgent, gripping real-life spy story that should be seen by every American, and quite likely by everybody else too. No matter how much you think you know about the Snowden affair, the film provides important new context and surprising new facts, as well as an up-close personal encounter with the 21st-century’s most famous whistleblower.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/13/citizenfour_laura_poitras_secret_snowden_documentary_is_electric/feed/4From 9/11 to ISIS: The massive failure of U.S. intelligencehttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/from_911_to_isis_the_massive_failure_of_u_s_intelligence_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/from_911_to_isis_the_massive_failure_of_u_s_intelligence_partner/#commentsWed, 01 Oct 2014 11:00:00 +0000Jacob Sugarmanhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13785239What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters. You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities. Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for... well, the salacious hell of it. Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of "spycraft" gains its own name: LOVEINT.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/from_911_to_isis_the_massive_failure_of_u_s_intelligence_partner/feed/21Obama, the slide back to Iraq and the power of the “Deep State”http://www.salon.com/2014/09/20/obama_the_slide_back_to_iraq_and_the_power_of_the_deep_state/
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/20/obama_the_slide_back_to_iraq_and_the_power_of_the_deep_state/#commentsSat, 20 Sep 2014 17:00:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13776843It was certainly impolitic of filmmaker Michael Moore, and possibly unfair as well, to tell the Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview that Barack Obama would only be remembered, a century from now, as the first black president of the United States. I am tempted to respond that while Obama’s race will always be the headline, its real significance is more like a footnote. He will quite plausibly be remembered more for other things, and some of them (though not a lot of them) are laudable. He began the process of moving the country away from our profoundly unfair and overpriced catch-as-catch-can private health insurance system toward some kind of socialized medicine. (Yeah, I said it.) That’s no small achievement, considering how many previous administrations have impaled themselves on the same sword, although God alone knows how long it will take for that process to play out.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/09/20/obama_the_slide_back_to_iraq_and_the_power_of_the_deep_state/feed/403Is Obama haunted by Bush’s ghost – or possessed by him?http://www.salon.com/2014/08/09/is_obama_haunted_by_bushs_ghost_%e2%80%93_or_possessed_by_him/
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/09/is_obama_haunted_by_bushs_ghost_%e2%80%93_or_possessed_by_him/#commentsSat, 09 Aug 2014 16:30:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13744490Barack Obama is a much more cheerful fellow than Ebenezer Scrooge, but he faces a version of the same problem: He’s haunted by the ghost of a predecessor and collaborator, and he can’t get free of it. Halfway through Obama’s second term in the White House, he remains – in the most charitable interpretation – hemmed in or handcuffed by the policies and philosophies of the Oval Office’s previous occupant. He has never entirely gotten America extricated from Iraq, the issue that got him elected in the first place, and now seems to be getting dragged back in, à la Michael Corleone, by a dreadful civil war that the George W. Bush administration’s disastrous mistakes made possible. Obama has been unwilling or unable to hold anyone to account for the massive financial crimes that produced the catastrophic collapse at the tail end of the Bush era, and has largely left economic and financial oversight in the hands of the same criminal class.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/08/09/is_obama_haunted_by_bushs_ghost_%e2%80%93_or_possessed_by_him/feed/253America’s sinister metamorphosis: George W. Bush & the corporatization of national securityhttp://www.salon.com/2014/08/05/americas_sinister_metamorphosis_george_w_bush_the_corporatization_of_national_security_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/05/americas_sinister_metamorphosis_george_w_bush_the_corporatization_of_national_security_partner/#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 12:45:00 +0000Peter Finocchiarohttp://www.salon.com/?p=13741234As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so.

During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the U.S. government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/08/05/americas_sinister_metamorphosis_george_w_bush_the_corporatization_of_national_security_partner/feed/9The empire strikes back: How Brandeis foreshadowed Snowden and Greenwaldhttp://www.salon.com/2014/05/24/the_empire_strikes_back_greenwald_snowden_and_the_lessons_of_louis_brandeis/
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/24/the_empire_strikes_back_greenwald_snowden_and_the_lessons_of_louis_brandeis/#commentsSat, 24 May 2014 16:00:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13683579In the famous wiretapping case Olmstead v. United States, argued before the Supreme Court in 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote one of the most influential dissenting opinions in the history of American jurisprudence. Those who are currently engaged in what might be called the Establishment counterattack against Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, including the eminent liberal journalists Michael Kinsley and George Packer, might benefit from giving it a close reading and a good, long think.

Brandeis’ understanding of the problems posed by a government that could spy on its own citizens without any practical limits was so far-sighted as to seem uncanny. (We’ll get to that.) But it was his conclusion that produced a flight of memorable rhetoric from one of the most eloquent stylists ever to sit on the federal bench. Government and its officers, Brandeis argued, must be held to the same rules and laws that command individual citizens. Once you start making special rules for the rulers and their police – for instance, the near-total impunity and thick scrim of secrecy behind which government espionage has operated for more than 60 years – you undermine the rule of law and the principles of democracy.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/05/24/the_empire_strikes_back_greenwald_snowden_and_the_lessons_of_louis_brandeis/feed/179Darkness in the heart of America: Why the Snowden docs should really make us nervoushttp://www.salon.com/2014/02/21/darkness_at_the_center_of_america_why_the_snowden_docs_should_really_make_us_nervous_partner/
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/21/darkness_at_the_center_of_america_why_the_snowden_docs_should_really_make_us_nervous_partner/#commentsFri, 21 Feb 2014 13:42:00 +0000Peter Finocchiarohttp://www.salon.com/?p=13608340Here, at least, is a place to start: intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million. At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town. Let’s assume for a moment that it’s accurate and add a caveat. Whatever he had with him on those thumb drives when he left the agency, Edward Snowden did not take all the NSA’s classified documents. Not by a long shot. He only downloaded a portion of them. We don’t have any idea what percentage, but assumedly millions of NSA secret documents did not get the Snowden treatment.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/02/21/darkness_at_the_center_of_america_why_the_snowden_docs_should_really_make_us_nervous_partner/feed/65Abscam, the NSA and the ’70s: The real “American Hustle”http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/abscam_the_nsa_and_the_70s_the_real_american_hustle/
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/abscam_the_nsa_and_the_70s_the_real_american_hustle/#commentsSat, 14 Dec 2013 17:00:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13557338Those who did not personally live through the 1970s may have inherited the notion that the decade was a decadent, nonstop party: Disco, cocaine, flamboyant fashions for people of all genders and the first flowering of gay culture, with punk rock sneaking into the club late to inject a discordant note of nihilism. Some of those hedonistic stereotypes get a lot of play in David O. Russell’s highly enjoyable awards-season favorite “American Hustle,” but beneath the surface other aspects of the ‘70s are visible too. Especially in the wake of the United States’ ignominious retreat from Vietnam, the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, American life felt like a combination of unmanageable chaos and cultural stagnation.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/abscam_the_nsa_and_the_70s_the_real_american_hustle/feed/31Lies I told to become a spyhttp://www.salon.com/2013/11/03/lies_i_told_to_become_a_spy/
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/03/lies_i_told_to_become_a_spy/#commentsSun, 03 Nov 2013 21:30:00 +0000Sarah Hepolahttp://www.salon.com/?p=13523182Strapped to a straight-backed metal chair, I plant my feet firmly on the ground and try not to think about the electrodes and sweat monitors attached to my hands and chest. The room is silent – no air-conditioning hum, no buzz from the blue fluorescent lights.

Angela, the CIA polygraph technician, sits in a chair facing me and begins.

“Have you disclosed all of your illegal drug use to the Agency?”

I say yes. I had told them about trying marijuana, so I’m covered. Angela smiles. She continues with the next two questions, which I answer easily. Then the final one:

“Are you hiding any contacts with foreign government officials?”

My stomach lurches at the word “hiding,” but the answer is obvious: no. I say I don’t have any contacts with foreign government officials.

The polygraph screen goes wild. I inhale sharply, my heart pounding.

“Let’s try that again,” Angela says, and repeats the question. My hands shake as I remind myself I have nothing to hide – nothing big anyway. But I fail again. My body is betraying me.

Angela tells me to breathe deeply and relax. I fidget in the metal chair. Closing my eyes, I picture the ocean. And then I panic.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/11/03/lies_i_told_to_become_a_spy/feed/33The NSA-DEA police state tangohttp://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/#commentsSat, 10 Aug 2013 16:30:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13437867So the paranoid hippie pot dealer you knew in college was right all along: The feds really were after him. In the latest post-Snowden bombshell about the extent and consequences of government spying, we learned from Reuters reporters this week that a secret branch of the DEA called the Special Operations Division – so secret that nearly everything about it is classified, including the size of its budget and the location of its office -- has been using the immense pools of data collected by the NSA, CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to go after American citizens for ordinary drug crimes. Law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, have been coached to conceal the existence of the program and the source of the information by creating what’s called a “parallel construction,” a fake or misleading trail of evidence. So no one in the court system – not the defendant or the defense attorney, not even the prosecutor or the judge – can ever trace the case back to its true origins.

Then there was the epic eye roll that White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennnan, who was recently tapped to lead the CIA, delivered when asked about Bachmann. "I’m not even going to try to divine what it is that sometimes comes out of Congress," he said with a laugh.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/02/11/michele_bachmann_still_has_access_to_our_nations_top_secrets/feed/7U.S. Intelligence emerges from the shadowshttp://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/u_s_intelligence_emerges_from_the_shadows/
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/u_s_intelligence_emerges_from_the_shadows/#commentsMon, 17 Dec 2012 17:35:00 +0000Jacob Sugarmanhttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13147486Weren’t those the greatest of days if you were in the American spy game? Governments went down in Guatemala and Iran thanks to you. In distant Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam, what a role you played! And even that botch-up of an invasion in Cuba was nothing to sneeze at. In those days, unfortunately, you -- particularly those of you in the CIA -- didn’t get the credit you deserved.

You had to live privately with your successes. Sometimes, as with the Bay of Pigs, the failures came back to haunt you (so, in the case of Iran, would your “success,” though so many years later), but you couldn’t with pride talk publicly about what you, in your secret world, had done, or see instant movies and TV shows about your triumphs. You couldn’t launch a “covert” air war that was reported on, generally positively, almost every week, or bask in the pleasure of having your director claim publicly that it was “the only game in town.” You couldn’t, that is, come out of what were then called “the shadows,” and soak up the glow of attention, be hailed as a hero, join Americans in watching some (fantasy) version of your efforts weekly on television, or get the credit for anything.